


On The Subject of Aliens

by cisselah



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Misunderstandings, POV Outsider, Poor Annie just wants things to make sense again, Rory as a giant python, The Author Regrets Nothing, Warning: a distinct lack of pants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25526902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cisselah/pseuds/cisselah
Summary: Look, objectively speaking, there is nothing wrong with Annie's roommate. He pays his rent in time, he doesn't really leave a mess behind, and most of the time he's barely even there.Then one day she opens the door to find him wrestling a large python in a purple skirt. Things go downhill pretty fast from there on.Or: The Doctor decides to get a flat and a roommate, and said roommate has no idea what they are getting themselves into.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	On The Subject of Aliens

**Author's Note:**

> Found this lying round on my computer and thought I might as well post it. I have not proofread it, so there are probably a bunch of errors in it. Enjoy anyway!

It's two a.m when Annie opens the door and finds her roommate wrestling with a large python in a purple skirt.

_Breathe,_ she tells herself and does just that. _Just roll with the punches, Annie. It's not weird until you make it weird._

"I'm back!" she calls out, kicking her shoes off and carefully taking her coat off to hang on the hook in the hallway. She stares intently at it, because for some reason it's easier then watching John Smith (and if that's not a fake name, then she's a bloody porg) wrestle with a snake on the Mickey Mouse carpet he got her as a present just last week (it hadn't been her birthday, but he'd looked so hopeful she'd accepted the carpet anyway and smiled as if it was).

"Did you - _panting_ \- have a nice day?" John calls happily from the carpet, sticking his head up to grin goofily at her before yelping and diving down into the wriggling pile of snake with a 'oh stop it, Rory, it's been hours, the antidote isn't going to thicken any quicker just because you swallow me!'.

I don't want to know, Annie tells herself sternly and plasters a smile on her face.

"Yes. Nice day." she tells John. "I'm gonna be in my room now. Don't call me if something goes wrong."

She takes her bag and - walks, definitely walks - into her room.

In the kitchen, the smoke detector starts to wail.

-.-

Annie opens the door and five pair of eyes turns to her with an identical startled look in them.

"Ohhhhh... _Hiiiii!"_ a blonde woman smiles goofily, awkwardly putting one hand up to wave at her sloppily.

"Oh Rassilion's tits, put that down," the deceptively old man next to her groans in horror, looking very much like he wants to be anywhere else but here. "Honestly, I don't know what happened to us. Why do we insist on being like this?"

Nobody answers him, but there's a fair amount of uneasy shifting occurring.

"Okay, listen Annie, I can explain -" John says a tiny bit desperately, flapping his big hands about like he always does when he's about to explain something Annie doesn't understand and still will not understand when he's done.

"You're naked!" Annie hisses, staring intently at the naked (oh god, that is definitely the wrong choice of word) wall behind him, hugging her shopping bag close to her chest.

"No! Yes! Well, maybe, but -"

_"Naked."_

"I admit it's a bit of an unfortunate... thingamajig... going on here, but Annie, you've got to listen to me, it's of vital importance that you -"

" _I'm gonna be in my room!_ " And with that, Annie turns around and practically sprints into her room, slamming the door after her. Then, she sinks down on the floor, leaning against the door as her heart hammers away in her chest, the words _not weird not weird oh god that's so weird, who organizes an orgy in a shared apartment!_ spinning on repeat in her head.

"Well..." One of the naked guests coughs awkwardly from the other side of the door. "Would this be an awkward time to mention I'm pretty sure I wired fake Henry VIII's teleport to these space and time coordinates? Because I _just_ remember I did."

-.-

It's Tuesday when Annie opens the door and finds the British prime minister duct-taped to a chair in the living room. John grins at her nervously, half-frozen in the act of gagging the _leader of their country!_

"Okay, Annie, the first step here is to keep calm and-"

Annie slams the door shut and - walks, she walks because she's calm and reasonable and everything is perfectly normal and alright - down the stairs and out into the rain once more.

She thinks she'll sleep at her sister's tonight. It's been a while since she last saw her.

-.-

When Annie opens the cleaning cupboard and almost gets crushed by a giant robot and a bottle of bleach, she's finally had enough. After two seconds of mournfully staring at her new, ruined blouse, she heads into the bedroom to change to something that doesn't belong in the trash (or the dry cleaners), and is just in the process of putting new pants on when she hears the door open.

_You!_ she thinks with the rage only a person who crochets can feel, and without bothering to put any pants on, marches out into the corridor where John is struggling to remove his shoes.

"I have put up with a lot from you, but that thing is the last drop, John!" she whisper-shouts at him, careful to keep the volume down in case the neighbors are eavesdropping again.

Her roommate googles. "What thing? Wait, if this is about the Mona Lisa I've got stashed under my bed - I swear I am going to return it next week, I just need it to stop -"

"IT'S ABOUT THE ROBOT, JOHN!" Annie screams, abandoning all attempts at discretion.

Her roommate does a double-take, gapes, then frowns. "Wait... What robot?"

"THE ONE THAT ALMOST CRUSHED ME!"

There's an odd sort of horrified realization growing in John's eyes.

"Annie! Annie! Dearest, clever, Annie! I need you to listen to me!" he says and puts his hands heavily upon her shoulders. He's half a head longer than her, so when he leans down to look her in the eyes, he looms despite his youthful appearance. "Did you let the cyberman - _the robot, Annie, did you let the robot_ \- out of the closet?"

What?

"ANNIE! This is of the most vital importance: did you let the cyberman out of the closet?!"

"I - yes? I mean, I opened the door and it just - it just fell out... so I think yes?"

Before she can even attempt to recover from the shock of having sweet, clumsy, childish John Smith shouting at her like that, he's practically thrown her out of the apartment and locked the door behind him.

Gaping, Annie recovers and reaches for the door.

"DELETE! DELETE! DELETE! THE _DOCTOR_ MUST BE _DELETED!"_ a robotic voice cries out from behind the door, quickly followed by a crash and a shriek and an explosion.

Very slowly, Annie retracts her hand.

-.-

There's an angry old Scotsman yanking at the door when Annie arrives home. He's wearing a homeless man's coat and a nightgown underneath it, and he smells like he's been lying in restaurant trash for a week.

"- don't understand why the key won't work, I know I put it around here somewhere, oh why, why, why did I have to forget where I put the key?!"

For a moment, all Annie can do is stare. Partly, because she doesn't know what to do when an old person gets confused like that, and partly because she's pretty sure she'd seen that face four months before, during what has - inside her friend-circle - become known as 'The Orgy Incident'.

"Can I help you, sir?" she calls out after a full ten minutes of watching the angry Scotsman yank at the door handle and complain about how 'it doesn't do wood, oh, why do I keep forgetting to fix that?!'.

The Scotsman startles. He turns towards her, his bushy, stern eyebrows flying up at the sight of her standing in the other end of the hallway, grocery-bags in both hands.

"Annie!" he calls out, delighted. "Oh, it's you! Dearest, clever, Annie! You're finally here! Open the door for me, will you? I need to get into my room to get some new clothes and a multi-transmutalicity-ish circuit! I stashed one in the Tardis, but I simply can't remember where, and she refuses to tell me - can you believe it! - so now I've got to go and get one from here! My twelfth self used to hoard them, you know. Put them under every bed he slept in, that snob! Oh, I'm so glad I don't have any of that youthful snass anymore - wait, I don't have it, do I? Oh regeneration is such a bother, you never know what you - Annie. Annie, what are you doing with that phone? No, no, no, put that down, there is no need for-"

"Police? I think there's a crazy person banging on my door. No, I won't hold! You don't understand - this an emergency, he's not wearing any pants!"

-.-

There's an incredibly sexy man outside her front door. Annie, with the grace of a 21st century woman who hasn't been laid in three years, leans causally against the door-frame and tries not to swoon.

The incredibly sexy man smirks charmingly at her.

"Well, hello there, who might you b-"

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" John shrieks, dashing out of nowhere and tackling the incredibly sexy man to the floor. The sexy man laughs throatily, sending deep pangs of lust down Annie's stomach, as he tumbles down in a tangle of limbs.

"Really, doctor? All you had to do was -" is the last thing she hears him say before John kicks the front door shut with a disproportional amount of force for someone so skinny.

-.-

_Breathe, Annie_ , Annie reminds herself forcefully as she closes her eyes and digs her nails deep into the palms of her fists. _Remember, it's not weird until you make it weird, so just roll with the punches and breathe._

"I don't know if I like this tea," the lizard lady that sits in her kitchen sniffs, daintily putting down her cup on its corresponding plate at the table.

"I'll see if he has something else then, ma'am," her Victorian assistant demurs with a shallow curtsy and a fond look at her lizard mistress sneer.

"John is out. He'll be back before dawn, he said. Something about stopping the end of the world as we know it and angry Scottish women. I don't know anything else and I don't want to." Annie says numbly as she forces herself to stare blankly at the teacup and not the scales on her guest's (John's guests, they are John's guests, damn it) face.

The lizard lady sighs.

"I suppose we'll have to make ourselves at home then - oh, not that one, Jenny, that one always makes me so hungry. Oh, yes, that one will do, dear."

"You do that." Annie agrees, then turns around and walks back into her bedroom and cosy little bed and pillow.

It's four a.m damn it. Does it never end?

-.-

The answer to that is no.

-.-

It's 4 a.m on a saturday morning when Annie blearily opens the front door to find a sharply dressed blonde woman and her squad of (literally) sharply dressed special ops soldiers standing on the other side.

"Hello, Ms. Green. My name is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Head of Scientific Research at UNIT. I am looking for the --" the woman begins politely.

"Second door to the right. I don't want to know." Annie robotically interrupts, turns around and flees back into her bedroom.


End file.
